The book blog

I had all these grand ideas about blogging every time I finished a book, but (as ever) this hasn’t happened . . . what you now have is a catch-up blog, written at 00.43am on a day that I had technically declared off, but had still intended to do more with than I actually did in the end. Oh well. Perhaps we all need to have do-nothing-at-all days.

This is more to keep track of what books I’ve been reading than a review opportunity, especially as I’m pretty tired. I hope I don’t miss any books out here. If I suddenly remember any, I’ll add them in next time – this doesn’t necessarily have to be in order.

1. What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami.
My favourite author is a very unique, and very reclusive man, and this is probably the nearest to an autobiography that we’re ever going to get out of him. So I enjoyed it for all the little anecdotes about his life, and his usual wise words and unusual ponderings, but this was a book primarily about his relationship with jogging, and I don’t have a huge interest in running, so I didn’t find this to be one of his best. Seeing as he’s the world’s greatest author (ok, imo) it was still better than 99% of the stuff out there.

2. Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger.
I’m hoping to review this on my Youtube channel at some point in the near future, so I don’t want to go into a lot of detail here . . . safe to say that it was very different from what I was expecting. The supernatural element was unexpected (although if I had bothered to read the blurb it wouldn’t have been), and it wasn’t up to the standard of ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – but that TTTW is about as perfect as a book can be, so that was no surprise. There were a lot of things going on, and a lot of great ideas, but it felt like she had perhaps been rushing for a deadline, and hadn’t quite got the balance between them right. And most of the characters were a lot more difficult to sympathise and empathise with this time round. Having said that, as a study of the complexities of female ‘friendships’ it was very accurate, to a slightly terrifying degree. I liked how you were never quite sure who you were meant to like and who you weren’t. And the whole storyline about the agoraphobic man and his wife was beautiful – I only wish she had saved it for another story, it would have simplified things.

3. Robin of Sherwood – Michael Morpurgo.
It breaks my heart that this book is out of print. It is wonderful on so many levels, and should be a classic, not something that you have to hunt out on Amazon second hand book dealers. Review on Youtube.

4. Dead Until Dark – Charlene Harris
Umm, yes, Vampire chick-lit. But very well-written vampire fiction, which makes it ok, right? :) This is the first out of the novel series that the TV show ‘True Blood’ is based on, and as the show is one of my TV guilty pleasures, I thought I might as well try out the books (my cousin has the whole series) . . . . this is basically X-rated Twilight. Ok, that is way too harsh – this was published a few years before Twilight, and contains too many similar plot-features to be ignored (vampire-human-werewolf love triangle, telepathy, first-person narrative of unusual heroine, who longs for her hunky, gentlemanly, very old vampire boy), so Twilight is basically the tweeny fanfiction of this. This was actually pretty different from the TV show, it wasn’t quite as . . . shocking, and there’s a whole main character and her storylines that make up a major part of the show, but didn’t appear in any way in this novel. The book was much more focused on the central couple, rather than being an ensemble metaphor about equality like the TV show (which is one of the reasons I like ‘True Blood’ so much). But, for all its differences, I still enjoyed the book, mainly because the central character, Sookie, is brilliant and feels very original, the writing was pleasantly quirky, the murder mystery elements played well, and it was genuinally scary in places. The TV show really managed to capture the characters well. My cousin says this book series actually gets better as it goes along (again, opposite to Meyer’s Twilight), so I might have to stick with this one . . . not something I should really admit to, though :)

I’m sure I’ve read more than four books this year, but I can’t remember any other titles . . . anyway, I really need to step up this reading if I want to make 100 by the end of the year. You’ll hopefully hear more from me soon :)